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Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in a suburb of London called Camberwell. He was the first child of Robert and Sarah Anna Browning. Robert's mother was a fervent Evangelical and an accomplished pianist. Robert's father became a clerk in the Bank of England only after angering his own father and giving up a fortune. Robert's grandfather had sent his father oversees to a West Indies sugar plantation, but Robert's father found the institution of slavery so abhorrent that he gave up his prospects and returned home. On his modest salary as a bank clerk he was able to marry, raise a family, and to acquire a library of 6000 volumes. He was an exceedingly well-read man who could recreate historical events like the seige of Troy with the household chairs and tables for the benefit of his inquisitive son.

Most of the Robert's education was done at home. He was an extremely bright child and a voracious reader (he read through all fifty volumes of the Biographie Universelle ) and he learned Latin, Greek, French and Italian by the time he was fourteen. He attended the University of London in 1828, but left to pursue his own reading at his own pace. This extentive education led to problems for his readers since many of his references and allusions in his poetry were obsure readings. In the 1830's he met the actor William Macready who inspired the beginning of Robert's use of dramatic monologue. His poems were often met with misunderstanding or indifference. Not until the 1860's did he at last gain a public and become recognized as a rival or equal of Lord Alfred Tennyson who was an outstanding contempory.

In 1845 he saw Elizabeth Barrett's Poems and sought to meet her. He found that she was an invalid and very much under the control of a domineering father, but in spite of this the two fell in love and married in September 1846 and a few days later eloped to Italy, where they lived until her death in 1861. The years in Florence were among the happiest for both of them. Elizabeth's love for him was demonstrated in the Sonnets from the Portugese, and to her he dedicated Men and Women, which contains his best poetry. Public sympathy for him after her death (in literary circles he was know as Miss Browning's husband as she was a much more popular poet during their lifetimes) surely helped the critical reception of his Collected Poems (1862) and Dramatis Personae (1863). The Ring and the Book (1868-9), (the most ambitious of his works) which told of a Roman murder and trial, finally won him considerable popularity. The influence of his handling of diction and the monologue form is perhaps to be noted in such twentieth century poets as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Robert Browning and Tennyson were now mentioned together as the foremost poets of the age. Although he lived and wrote actively for another twenty years but the late 1860's were the peak of his career. His influence continued to grow, however, and finally lead to the founding of the Browning Society in 1881. He died in 1889, on the same day that his final volume of verse, Asolando, was published. Robert is buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.